


Branding

by Hyacinthium



Series: Oumasai/Saiou Week Au [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kokichi's Parents Are Gross, M/M, Minor Violence, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 22:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthium/pseuds/Hyacinthium
Summary: They had been best friends as children, always playing, always watching Dangan Ronpa. Childhood friends up until a bit before middle school.Shuichi has a lot of regrets.





	Branding

**Author's Note:**

> It begins.

Shuichi's bedroom is the same temperature year round. It has to be in order to protect both his merchandise and his computer. Shuichi himself doesn't really mind not having perfect temperature control otherwise, but right now? 

Ouma Kokichi is happily munching a popsicle and shivering from it. In Shuichi's room. During summer. 

Ouma has been ‘sleeping over’ with Shuichi for three days now, after a week of Shuichi suspecting that his home situation had deteriorated to the breaking point. It's awful, awful how the boy's parents could be so disgusting to the point of kicking out their own child. 

Ouma hadn't even said anything either. Shuichi ended up cornering him after stalking him back to their favorite tree on the local park. 

They had made a shoddy house there and called it Hope's Peak. Back when Kokichi- when Ouma still liked Dangan Ronpa. 

But then Shuichi had gotten upset with him, for the crime of not liking it anymore… 

It's probably his biggest regret. Especially now. Shuichi isn't sure he even likes Dangan Ronpa like he did a month ago, during auditions. It's hard to say. 

Looking at his figures and at how Ouma avoids their painted gazes hurts. It's not Shuichi's fault and he knows that. But Shuichi remembers going over to Kokichi's house and thinking how wrong it looked. How the sunnier than the sun painted home had become like a hovel slated for demolition. 

Shuichi’s parents are still downstairs trying to sort things out. They've given up on Ouma's parents. 

Kokichi stands up and tells Shuichi that he's going to grab another popsicle. 

Shuichi’s mouth thins.

His pajamas reveal Kokichi's too skinny waist for a split second. 

He knows that Kokichi is either going to listen in or that the boy will be going into the attic to cry again. 

Shuichi’s hands fly to the Teruteru stress ball on his desk and squeeze. He lives for Dangan Ronpa on some level. He's signed up to die for Dangan Ronpa on some level. Ko- Ouma's parents had once had a great conversation with him over plot lines and-

And now Shuichi can only hear their sallow faces flap saggy lips and say, “If he won't join Dangan Ronpa for us, then we don't want him here anymore.”

There had been more. 

More as Shuichi's chest filled with a horror beyond TV branded Despair. Because he'd always laughed off the stories of This. This cornucopia of Those Fans, always netting a ‘cool story bro’, and Shuichi laughing on the internet. Now his ears are echoing with nonsensical but real sentences that seem like lies. 

‘Maybe we can just make our own fan killing game.’

Should be outlandish horror stories that you read for fun late at night. Fangan Ronpas happening irl, that would never be a thing these days. 

‘your son should join too’

Shuichi already had. The letter of either rejection or acceptance sits in his desk drawer. He wants to open it and he wants to burn it. 

Ouma's parents looked more like corpses than the road kill that Shuichi had once posted to his vent account. He wants to look at his notebooks full of deaths and fun concepts, and then look up if they match any crimes. Not to have fun or laugh about people who commit crimes in a perfectly peaceful world. To wonder or see how many were committed by people so useless without Dangan Ronpa that they become monsters. Ouma's family is nonexistent beyond his mother and father. 

Ouma Kokichi lived in a decade rotted tree house. 

The one they made together. 

For a week. 

Shuichi grabs a box cutter out of a hollowed book, and his mini cutting board from behind his desk, hands shaking and steady all at once; Teruteru slowly gets stabbed into tiny bits and chunks and slivers. 

Sluggish footsteps make pale hands scramble to hide the evidence that would make Kokichi feel scared. 

He had thought that the bruises and injuries were the results of Kokichi being bullied. 

Fuck, Shuichi can't help but see those walking corpses every time he thinks or says Ouma. When did that even start? He can't bear to do that anymore, and hopes he doesn't accidentally call Kokichi by his first name out loud. 

Kokichi walks in with redder eyes and a new popsicle. He avoids Shuichi's gaze, but sits on the bed instead of the floor this time. The last time that Kokichi did that was when they were children. 

Shuichi tries to smile, “Are you enjoying the… popsicle? 

God, that was stupid. 

Kokichi twirls a bit of his dyed ends. Shuichi remembers that Mrs Ouma liked a character with similar hair and feels like wrecking his room. He loves Dangan Ronpa still, and the sight of Kokichi suffering makes him feel dirty. 

“I got accepted into the killing game.”

His heart explodes. His heart rots. Shuichi's chest is becoming a huge meaty cavern with only scraps inside. 

“Why would you lie like that?” Shuichi prays. 

Memories of innocent childhood promises to get a Talent together flash through Shuichi's brain. They're both still so useless as far as Talent goes. 

Shuichi has spent more time obsessing over Dangan Ronpa than he has practicing to earn a Talent. 

All he's talented at is fanboying and-

Kokichi is so smart though, he could bounce back from this, he has a bunch of tiny talents! He could earn the right to become anything, and that's the only reason that Shuichi can find for Kokichi to join Dangan Ronpa. There's no way that Kokichi would join just to get into his shitty genetic donator’s drug shack again. Shuichi would go as far to beg his parents or pay for Kokichi's rent. He would sell his personal collection of rare merch for it. 

A month ago, that thought would be impossible. 

A month ago would have a Shuichi that didn't cut and shred and burn his single leather bound book; a painstakingly handwritten collection of stories about Kokichi. 

Shuichi’s chest stabs itself at the remembered contents. 

Mirrored in the wispy fantasies that Shuichi and his parents had heard from ‘aunty and uncle’. 

Disgusting. 

He'd changed the names and posted a few. 

Kokichi lets his grape popsicle melt down his fingers and onto Shuichi's rug. He stares at it and motions to his bag. 

Slowly, numbly, Shuichi gets up and walks over to that single bag of basic necessities. He opens it up, and removes things. It's all normal. But Shuichi loves detectives of any sort and feels around. His attentive fingers soon find added on stitches. 

Kokichi was always great at home economic classes. Shuichi still remembers the taste of perfectly subtle chocolate chip cookies, and the egocentric wish for Kokichi to have made them like that for him. That was before they'd started to reconcile. Middle school, when Shuichi started falling into Dangan Ronpa and began to look at Kokichi differently. 

It's easy to find the best way to open the hidden compartment. 

It's so fucking hard to look at the papers inside. 

“They recording me acting and doing chess in high level tournaments. Faked my handwriting and sent it all in,” Kokichi murmurs with zero breath. 

But that stuff is just to get the address for the auditions. 

Shuichi’s eyes comb over the oh so familiar handwriting and immediately spot a dozen flaws. He's spent nights pouring over discarded things written by Kokichi. It's shitty mimicry and he can't believe it worked. There's not a hint of Kokichi's naturally round penmanship. 

“You didn't have to go.” he says. Frustrated feelings escape the pit spreading to his eyes and stomach. Shuichi hopes that Kokichi didn't flinch and is glad that they aren't facing one another. 

“Saihara…”

But Shuichi refuses to look at Kokichi's face. Refuses to know that Kokichi must have the same dead look as his parents. 

Did Shuichi ever look like that? 

Does the memory of Shuichi looking like that exist as a recent thing inside of Kokichi's brain? Has Shuichi leered at Kokichi and made Kokichi remember his parents? 

“do you know what its like to be ignored by everyone while youre parents call you worthless and dress you up in the middle of the night before telling you how pretty youd look bleeding out pink blood in front of fake friends in a fake world while your only real friend rejects you when you try to tell him”

Shuichi cries. 

It's ugly, and there is snot, and yet; Kokichi does come over to hold him. Unlike Shuichi, Kokichi is still a good person. 

They open up Shuichi's letter and gaze down at the big stamp saying accepted. It pairs perfectly with Kokichi's matching one, the big Despair Red letter grinning up at them next to a little Enoshima Junko's happy face. It feels like a brand. 

They promise to stay together, this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Minor clarification of exactly what was going on with Kokichi's parents and to him, they were not sexually abusing him. They were indeed trying to groom him into wanting to join Dangan Ronpa, physically abusing him, and verbally/emotionally abusing him. They started doing drugs at some point. Just generally became scum.
> 
> And yes, Shuichi wrote nasty Dangan Ronpa fueled things about Kokichi. It's impossible for me to just fully lily whitewash away pregame Shuichi, sorry. Boy has Issues.


End file.
